


Dust in the Hourglass

by PitViperOfDoom



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen, daemons AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:41:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitViperOfDoom/pseuds/PitViperOfDoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How different would San Fransokyo be if everyone's soul existed outside of their body? A collection of stories and vignettes about the Big Hero 6 cast, and their daemons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Growing Up

According to a candy wrapper that Tadashi once read, the youngest dæmon ever to settle was six years and eleventh months old. He remembers being scared about that until his seventh birthday, staying up late some nights watching his dæmon change her form to reassure him. He sees his mother's Melanthius and his father's Marici, a tabby cat and a collared lizard and nothing else, and he hugs Mirume close while she switches from snake to rabbit in his arms. The thought of her losing that, of being stuck in one shape for the rest of their lives, scares him. People ask “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and he shrugs and mumbles something different every time, because if growing up means being trapped for Mirume, then what will it mean for him?

Hiro being born hadn't changed his mind, back when he was six and a half. Tadashi remembers that day, peeking at the tiny bundle in Mom's arms with Mirume perched on his head as a robin for a better view. He was so small and squishy-looking, with a tiny bundle of a blind newborn puppy curled against him, both of them fast asleep. Mirume had become a moth then, extra soft and careful to flutter to the blanket for a closer look at their brother and his dæmon. Mom had smiled at that, and Tadashi hadn't known why. Being a big brother had meant growing up a little, but it had also meant a brand-new person to watch, to hold – someone like him but tinier. Mirume had laughed, the first time they saw Inari change, from a tiny puppy to a round, fluffy chick – an owlet, Dad had said. And that only made Tadashi more eager never to grow up. Playing with Hiro is extra-fun because he can watch their dæmons chase each other, Inari stumbling on puppy and kitten legs, Mirume nimble and careful as she gently noses and bats her with soft paws or gentle wings.

How boring will it be, to suddenly get stuck in one shape forever, while Inari gets to switch and change for years after?

No, Tadashi Hamada is well aware that he is not ready to grow up.

So, it's kind of unfair when his tenth birthday is two months away and Aunt Cass is sitting in front of him, telling him that his parents are dead and he and Hiro are orphans.

Mirume goes still on his shoulder, and he feels her sharp little weasel claws poking through his shirt. She clambers down into his lap to become a fox so that he can properly hug her and sob into her fur. Aunt Cass can't come too close, and neither can Epiphron. Tadashi wants her to, but neither of them will risk her touching Mirume by accident. So she waits until his dæmon slinks down to the floor and presses against Tadashi's foot in the form of a mouse, and Aunt Cass pulls him into her arms while Epiphron scuttles down to brush Mirume gently with one of his eight legs. The tears don't go away for a good long while, and Tadashi is glad that Hiro is napping in the other room.

Eventually he has to pull away. He sniffles and rubs his eyes, and it hurts but he has a job to do now. He has to help her tell Hiro.

But no – helping her won't do. If he goes in with her, then all he'll do is stand there like an idiot while she does all the talking. And Aunt Cass is great, wonderful even, almost as good as Mom, but he doesn't think she can tell him in a way that Hiro will get it. He won't get it anyway – he's only three, and three-year-olds don't get stuff like that. But Tadashi is his big brother, and he's been talking to Hiro since he was born, and maybe, just maybe, he can get it across. They were his and Hiro's parents, after all.

Hiro is up and about and shrieking with laughter when Tadashi comes in. He's stretched up on tiptoe, his little fingers curled around the lowest shelf on the bookcase that he can reach. Inari is several shelves above him as a half-grown kitten, far enough from him to feel the pull of their bond but not far enough for it to hurt. She looks up and sees them before Hiro does.

“Miru! Miru!” Inari's voice is high and excited, and her tail waves from side to side. Tadashi feels Mirume's alarm as she changes into a snowy owl and flies across the room. Their bond stretches, and he runs forward to catch up with her. Gently she lifts Inari down from the shelf and deposits her safely on the ground, where Hiro scoops her up again.

Taking his little brother by the hand, Tadashi leads him to the couch and carefully lifts him up to sit. Mirume is a fox again, jumping up to sit a safe distance away so that Tadashi can kneel in front of his brother and tell him.

And no, Hiro doesn't get it. He's smart, but even smart toddlers don't know what death is. Tadashi's not sure he really knows what it is, either. He knows what it looks like, on TV – eyes closed, no breathing, no dæmon – and he's read and heard about dæmons vanishing in a burst of golden dust when their humans die. But he doesn't really know it. Knowing it is something that comes with growing up, and the last thing Tadashi wants right now is to grow up.

So Hiro doesn't get sad – he gets mad. He goes from confusion to annoyance to red-faced shouting, in spite of Tadashi's best efforts to be a good big brother and talk to him. He cries, but not the way Tadashi cried. He doesn't understand, he thinks that Tadashi is being mean and scaring him or that Mom and Dad are staying away on purpose, and he doesn't understand that they're really, _really gone_ and it's not Tadashi's fault or their fault or anyone's fault, really. It just happened, and these things happen, and it's not ever fair when they do.

Or maybe he does get it, Tadashi thinks when Mirume reminds him later about Inari. Inari, who didn't arch her back or hiss or spit, or even turn into anything scary, even as Hiro scowled and shouted and kicked. She had simply curled up into a tight, tiny ball, hiding her face until Mirume had nestled around her and wrapped her in her soft brush of a tail. It's a start.

Aunt Cass is wonderful, but she's only ever had to dote on them or babysit, which is different from living with them and taking care of Hiro every day. Hiro's always on his best behavior when they visit Aunt Cass, but it doesn't count as a visit when they can never go home again. Aunt Cass doesn't know how to deal with Hiro being naughty.

But Tadashi does.

Even if he doesn't know what dying is, Hiro does understand that Mom and Dad are gone and they're never coming back, and that afternoon when Inari climbed up the bookshelf is the last time Tadashi sees him smile for a good long time. If he's not sulking then he's crying his eyes out, crying until he screams, and nothing Aunt Cass tries will quiet him. It's not her fault, though. She just doesn't know how.

But Tadashi does.

She gets worried when Hiro falls silent for long stretches of time. Hiro's always a chatterbox around her, and Tadashi can tell that it scares her when Hiro goes through almost a whole day without saying a single word. But it's not depression or trauma like she thinks – it's just Hiro. Sometimes he just doesn't have anything to say, and he doesn't talk if there's nothing for him to talk about. Or he'll talk when she's not around. That's just how he is, and Aunt Cass doesn't really know him that well yet.

But Tadashi does.

Tadashi knows Hiro like the back of his hand. Mom and Dad did too, but they're gone now. Aunt Cass will do her best, he knows that. She'll get to know Hiro too – he knows that. But for now, he's all that Hiro has, and the thought keeps him up at night and frightens him and drives Mirume to bury her face in his chest.

The funeral is even worse.

Hiro doesn't know what death is, so how is Tadashi supposed to explain what a funeral is? He's only been to two in his whole life, for old relatives he barely knew, but now this one's for his parents and he's supposed to sit and be a model firstborn and stand up to speak and get Hiro to sit still, all at the same time, and it's more than he and Mirume can handle. She won't even get up when he stands to go to the podium – she curls up tighter on the seat and hides under her paws and tail, and Tadashi has to pick her up and carry her there himself. He almost throws up, at least twice, before he gets through the words on the page in front of him and sits back down. Hiro looks so confused, and Tadashi is so, so grateful that it's closed-casket because he is in no way prepared to explain to Hiro that Mom and Dad are dead, not sleeping.

When Hiro cries, Tadashi wonders if it's boredom or grief before deciding that it doesn't really matter either way. Inari is upset until Mirume becomes a bird and tucks her under her wing, and Tadashi hugs Hiro and lets his tears soak into his dress shirt.

He feels stretched thin. People and relatives gather around him later to say they're sorry and tell him how strong he's being, how much they respect that, how proud his parents would be. As if this strength is something to be admired. It's not – if they had any brains, they would pity him, because he wouldn't wish this on anyone. He has to be strong for Hiro and for Aunt Cass and for Mom and for Dad and for himself, all at the same time, and if this is what growing up means then he doesn't want it.

But it's not up to him anymore.

He knows it's not, on some level. He can say it out loud and know it to be true, but it's not until a little later when the gathering gets together after the funeral that he really internalizes it. It's nothing special, no shining or sparkling moment, it's just him and Hiro like it always is. Like it should be. Hiro's chasing Inari through the house, dodging around relatives with Inari in the form of a baby goat and Tadashi and Mirume following to make sure they don't trip anyone.

A group of their cousins get in his way, forcing Hiro to stop, but Inari's momentum carries her further away, and Hiro cries out and tries to push through when he feels their bond stretch painfully. His cry touches Tadashi's heart in the worst way, and he darts forward to corral his brother and nudge his way through their oblivious cousins. Beside him he feels Mirume change again, darting over to Inari to nudge her out of her frozen state and herd her back to Hiro's side. Tadashi watches Hiro hug Inari and sniffle – this must be the first time his little brother has ever really felt how much it hurts to be apart from his dæmon. He doesn't need that kind of pain on top of losing Mom and Dad.

He feels Mirume nose against his palm, and glances over. She's a dog now, though he doesn't quite recognize the breed yet. She's not very big, a medium-sized dog at most, black and white and brown with a tail like a plume and bent triangular ears. Her eyes are light brown, almost gold when she looks back at him, and as they stare at each other Tadashi feels both their hearts sink because he _knows_.

It's not fair.

He's heard that this is supposed to happen after some big turning point, like finding a passion or meeting a best friend or learning something new about himself or having an epiphany, and it's not fair, it's _not fair_ that his parents' funeral is what made his dæmon settle. It's supposed to be happy. It's supposed to be something you celebrate.

It's supposed to be something his parents could see.

But no, it's just him because Aunt Cass is in the kitchen, the grown-ups and cousins are ignoring him, and Hiro's too young and too busy clinging to Inari to understand what has just happened. It's all Tadashi can do to hide upstairs in the bathroom and cry, not because his parents are dead but because he's never ever going to see Mirume change her shape again, she'll never fly as a bird again or run as a cheetah, she's one thing and one thing only. (He looks it up – border collie. She's a border collie, they're herders, and isn't that fitting?)

“I'm sorry,” she whispers as she worms her way closer in his arms. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but Inari – she was just there, and she was so scared she couldn't move, I had to-”

“I know.” He isn't mad at her, she doesn't need to apologize. It's not her fault anyway. These things happen and it's not anyone's fault. All he can do is wipe his face and stand back up and do what has to be done.

Help Aunt Cass. Look out for Hiro and Inari.

They can do it. For them, they can do it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daemons featured:  
> Tadashi: Mirume, border collie _(Canis lupus familiaris)_  
>  Hiro: Inari, not yet settled.  
> Cass: Epiphron, Carolina wolf spider _(Hogna carolinensis)_  
>  Mom Hamada: Melanthius, tabby cat _(Felis domesticus)_  
>  Dad Hamada: Marici, common collared lizard _(Crotaphytus collaris)_


	2. Unique Up On It

 Fred is something special, and he knows it.

It's not anything he did. It's just how he was born, which isn't really fair to anyone. He never woke up one morning thinking _“I'm going to be special and unique for the rest of my life,”_ because it was thrust upon him and he has no idea what he would have chosen if it hadn't been. It's not even just about the silver spoon in his mouth, though that's a big part of it and Fred comes to understand that pretty early on. No, his father is the one who's rich, and Fred's accidental uniqueness has more to do with his mom than it has to do with his dad.

Mom's a witch.

It's not weird, at least not to him. There are things that Fred grows up with that other kids, as he quickly learns, are grossly fascinated by at best and scared of at worst. Things like Mom being so much younger-looking than dad, or Mom being gone a lot, or Mom fletching arrows at the dinner table or casting spells or giving him a necklace of carved, painted wood that's supposed to protect him from harm.

Things like Mom's dæmon never being around.

Fred only sees Ilmarinen once in a while, but... whatever, right? It's just a thing. It's just how witches and their dæmons are. That's how it's always been, for as long as Fred can remember. So what if kids think it's weird enough to whisper behind their hands about it? If they don't like it, then that's their problem, not Fred's. That's what he tells himself, at least.

Being a witch's son is nothing special, anyway. It's certainly not _bad._ Some of his favorite comic book characters are witch's sons. But there's a difference between being a masked superhero (or supervillain) whose mother is a witch, and being a skinny rich schoolkid whose mother is a witch. Aside from being used to weirdness and getting one necklace that doesn't protect him from stuff like loneliness or Tony Nuñez blacking his eye in the seventh grade, Fred has yet to see any perks.

He's pretty sure, early on, that his parents are disappointed.

Again, it's nothing that he did. But he's pretty sure Mom was hoping for a daughter, and got him instead. Boys can't be born witches, after all. Only girls can. Witch mom or no witch mom, Fred's one hundred percent human. It's not that Mom doesn't like humans – she married one, after all – or that she loves him less. But sometimes, when she's home instead of visiting her clan up north, and she thinks Fred isn't looking, she gives him these sad looks. Like she's watching him grow up and die of old age right in front of her.

There's also his dæmon – Solitaire. He used to think it was weird that they'd name his dæmon after a card game, until he actually looked it up and found out that it was also a name for a type of bird. Witch dæmons always settle as birds, and when Fred finds out what his dæmon's name means, his stomach hurts a little. Solitaire cuddles close in the form of an iguana like she's suddenly ashamed of herself, and he gives her scales a stroke to assure her – we're fine, we're fine just the way we are. Mom and Dad love us just fine.

He knows they do. They tell him that, and Heathcliff tells him that when Fred asks him one day just to make sure. It doesn't stop them from being gone a lot – Dad with his work and Mom with her clan's council. It doesn't stop Fred from being lonely, because it's hard to make friends at school when the rumors and whispers fly. There are no kids for Fred to play with or dæmons for Solitaire to be around, unless you count Heathcliff's Litsa, who's nice but not really great for when Solitaire wants to play. She's patient and kind, like you'd expect a bulldog dæmon to be, but having a butler is different from having a friend.

In the back of his mind he thinks that maybe that's the reason his sixteenth birthday comes before Solitaire settles. There's no end of teasing from that, either – Fred is pretty sure he's the last kid in his entire eleventh-grade class with a dæmon that still changes her shape. They don't say it out loud, but they're both hoping for a bird, in the backs of their minds, like maybe-just-maybe Fred could have _something_ witchlike about him.

But no. One moment he's helping run boxes for the Food Pantry, and the next Solitaire is lolloping at his heels, unable to change into something faster to keep up. He glances down, and a dark brown otter stares back up and they both know she won't be changing anymore.

His parents are happy for him, and he knows he's just projecting his own disappointment that he doesn't have a bird dæmon on them, so he shrugs off his insecurities because there's no point in keeping them. His parents love him, and Solitaire loves him and he loves her because they're part of each other.

It helps at the kids' charities. Solitaire's fluffy and warm, good for cuddling around the skittish shapeshifting dæmons of kids from broken homes or bad backgrounds. It feels good to see her doing that. It feels... _right_ , somehow. Plus, this means he can take the swimming unit in PE, which is always awesome.

Besides. There's one more thing he can do.

He and Solitaire used to whisper about this, late at night. The thought has always scared her, but it intrigues him.

Separation. Just like what Mom and Ilmarinen have. It's different from severing, from intercision (and just the thought of that is enough to make Fred nauseous). The bond between human and dæmon isn't broken, or even damaged. It's more like it's stretched, so that they can be as far apart from each other as they want without it hurting. All witches go through it, like a rite of passage, and sometimes humans do too. Back in the old days, if your dæmon was a dolphin or something, then you were out of luck and you had to stay on a boat for the rest of your life. But nowadays, if your dæmon settles as something inconvenient like that, a lot of hospitals have procedures for it. Just gradual stretching of the bond, until you reach a point where the pain stops and your dæmon's free to go wherever it likes.

It has to be gradual, though; Fred knows that much. Separate too fast – like from a fall or something – and the bond could snap. Fred's heard horror stories and urban legends about people who get separated from their dæmons on the subway – the doors close between them and the train takes off. If by some miracle you don't die of shock, then you live out the rest of your life as an empty, lobotomized husk.

So yeah, Fred can see why Solitaire doesn't like the idea. But it doesn't stop him from wondering.

It's a little bit after she settles that he finally (sort of) convinces her.

A lot of witch's sons separate from their dæmons, to feel close to their maternal families even if they can't truly join them. It's a coming-of-age thing for witches, kind of like a bat mitzvah or a quinceañera. Plenty of people do it, and it has like a one hundred percent success rate, so what's the harm? And it'd be useful; Fred wouldn't have to scoop her up or wait for her to catch up on land, and she could swim around to her heart's content. Solitaire is uncertain, but Fred isn't, and they agree to it before Fred asks Mom about it the next time she's home.

The touch of pride in her eyes is what really brings Solitaire around.

It's not until they're standing in the North Pole and Fred is staring out at the white expanse of ice in front of him that Solitaire balks again. She's shivering – otter fur is thick, and she's wrapped in blankets and sheltered from the wind by one of Ilmarinen's big gray wings, but this is one of the coldest places on the planet, and there's something about it that makes her feel sick. Dæmons can't enter it, which is why it's the perfect place for separation. No one's really sure why. It may be the cold. It may be something about the magnetic poles. It may be the fact that, as far as Fred can tell, there's absolutely nothing living, nothing growing on that entire stretch of ice.

Solitaire latches onto his pant leg and asks him not to go. She doesn't beg – she simply tells him not to. Mom pauses, looking at him, and he knows she won't be ashamed if he loses his nerve now, but he can't. He's come this far, and he's a witch's son. She went through this, and her mother did before her, and he can do it too.

But it's not just the Arctic making him feel cold as he stares straight ahead. He's going to be alone. And not just alone like going to school with no friends, or living in a house with only his butler for company. He's leaving Solitaire behind – no fur to stroke, no warmth to cuddle. Mom will be there, and Ilmarinen will stay with Solitaire, but if Mom can't take the place of having friends, then there's no way she can take the place of having Solitaire beside him.

Fred hugs his dæmon close, places her down, and starts walking.

It hurts. He's always known it would hurt, but this hurts more than books and articles and experts can put into words. It's stop-and-start as he tries to balance walking with breathing through the pain and awful, tearing sadness. It's all he can do to keep from turning and running back, throwing his arms around his dæmon, and never letting go of her again. It hurts and hurts and hurts until it finally stops hurting, and for a single powerful instant Fred wonders if he severed himself by accident. The rush of fear that comes with wondering is what convinces him he hasn't, and somehow he manages to stumble back to Solitaire's side.

She turns away from him. He thought this might happen – Mom said it did for her.

Solitaire doesn't come to school with him for a week, and that draws even more stares and whispered rumors, but Fred holds his head high even as the weight of all the attention drags at him. He can't even cuddle his dæmon for comfort, because she's upset with him for putting them through that and refuses to come out from under the bed. Mom says that Ilmarinen flew away after they separated, and she didn't know where he was for three months before he finally came back.

“But don't worry,” she whispers. “She's your dæmon, and she loves you. Remember that. She will too.”

And she does, not a moment too soon. Fred wakes up one night from a heart-pounding nightmare about snow and ice and their bond stretching until it snaps, to find her burrowing against his side for the first time since they separated. He almost bursts into tears right then and there.

But at school, the damage is done. Fred's a freak now, and Solitaire padding after him from class to class can't fix it. Not that it matters much – Fred's never had very many friends anyway, so there's nowhere for him to fall. All that matters is that she's back. They're together – different, but not really, not unless you really mind about that kind of thing. And Fred's grown up with it, so he doesn't.

It's just him and Solitaire, and Heathcliff, and his parents, and the rest of the world can come along if they want. And if they don't, then that's their loss, not his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dæmons featured:  
> Fred: Solitaire, North American river otter _(Lontra canadensis)_  
>  Fred's mom: Ilmarinen, grey heron _(Ardea cinerea)_  
>  Heathcliff: Litsa, English bulldog _(Canis lupus familiaris)_


	3. Hit the Ground Running

It takes a while, but Ethel finds, to her eternal frustration, that there aren't a lot of animals that humans can outrun. And she does know this, because Jiso goes through quite a few before they're ready to give up. Cats? No. Deer? Absolutely not. Rabbits? Not a prayer. Dogs? They've tried several, and no such luck. Even the tiny stupid lap-sized dogs can outstrip Gogo at her fastest on two legs. They're at their best when Jiso is an otter, because at least then they can tear across the park at top speed without having to wait for each other. But even so, it looks stupid; otters are built for swimming, not running, and Jiso's gallop looks as awkward and uncomfortable as she knows it feels.

The other option is for Jiso to be small, but that comes with its own problems. He hates having to ride around on her (because again, she's _so slow_ ), but running along the ground beside her almost gets him stepped on.

It's frustrating.

Ethel can feel her temper flare whenever they run, because no matter what Jiso is, it's never perfect. He spends a lot of time as a cat or a dog, and no matter how hard Ethel pushes herself, no matter how much she practices, she just can't keep up. It frustrates her, and it frustrates Jiso even more because he wants to go faster. He wants to let go like a racehorse on the last lap and _fly_ , literally or figuratively. But he can't, because when he gets too far ahead, their bond stretches and forces him to slow down to keep from hurting them. Ethel catches up, embarrassed and apologetic, because she's only human and her limits are built in, but Jiso could be so much more. He could be a gazelle or a cheetah, and he could be _so fast_ , but humans are just too slow.

Her classmates are in awe because she's the fastest runner in PE, and she's short so you wouldn't think she is. She can leave any one of her classmates in her dust, and they ooh and aah and vie for advantage of having her on their team in soccer and Capture the Flag. But Ethel sets her jaw and keeps close to Jiso in one of his predator forms and doesn't soak in the praise because they just don't get it. They don't get that it's not enough and she's not sure if it will _ever_ be enough.

Then Ethel's eighth birthday brings a brand-new bicycle, and with it their first glimmer of hope.

She throws herself into learning to ride the thing, with Jiso beside her every step and pedal of the way. He takes to the air on the first few tries, wary of the wobbling handlebars and the way the wheels teeter dangerously from side to side. A hummingbird form is useful; most other birds can't stop and hover and change directions on a dime. But Ethel learns, every day, wearing bumps and scratches and band-aids like medals of honor, until she can pedal in a straight line down the street and Jiso feels okay running instead of flying.

From there, she learns to do so much more.

Something awakens in her as she pedals down the street as fast as she can, with Jiso as a golden retriever pelting alongside her. She can feel wind whipping past her face, she can feel the speed stir in her stomach, twice over because she feels the same coming from Jiso. He's running with her as something that's not a weasel or an otter, and he's not quite full speed yet but it's something. It's more than what they had before.

Ethel pedals faster.

By the fifth grade, she's not as good at running as she used to be. She's sort of given up on running, because she can only run as fast as the fastest human, and the average house cat can run faster than the fastest human. In spite of this, she manages to keep the respect of her classmates, because words spreads fast through the schoolyard that Ethel Kim is an absolute _demon_ on her bike.

She may not be a fast runner, but she's a fast learner, and years of pedaling alongside Jiso, on streets and bike trails, grass and gravel, sand and rocks, has taught her a thing or two. She can change direction, swerve without wiping out, because you have to know how to do that when you bike every day with a dæmon you might run over if you're not quick and careful. (Jiso avoids long tails for a reason.) Not to say that she doesn't make a mistake here and there.

She pays for them when she does.

“What were you thinking?”

Ethel looks away. She can't run away from this conversation, or put a closed door between herself and her mother's angry face, because she's sitting in the backseat of the car with Jiso curled up next to her as a sleek, spotted serval, and her mother is driving her to the hospital.

“Answer me!”

“We wanted to go fast.” At eleven, Ethel can't quite find the right words to explain it. “It was just one hill.” With her arm in a makeshift sling, the argument doesn't hold up very well. But she can't put into words the feeling of wind in her hair and Jiso's fur, the smooth whirring of the bike underneath her, the excitement pounding through her veins and her bond with her dæmon, and the roller coaster tickle in her stomach as they sped toward a downhill drop and let momentum and gravity do the rest.

Ethel just hopes her bike is in better shape than her arm.

Her mother's sparrow dæmon puffs up to twice his size as he stares down disapprovingly at Jiso. “How could you let her do this?” he asks. “You should have known it wasn't safe!”

“It's not his fault,” Ethel protests when Jiso doesn't answer. “He saw the bump, and he _did_ warn me. There wasn't any time to turn.” Jiso headbutts her lightly, careful not to jostle the break.

The cast stays on her arm for six weeks, and Ethel stays off her bike. It's enough to drive anyone mad. Even without the broken arm, her bike is bent out of shape and probably won't pedal straight anymore, and more than anything she needs a new one. Her parents aren't having it, though.

“Take it easy,” the doctors say. “Do your homework,” her mother tells her. And then when her homework is done, the advice becomes “Go read a book.”

It's the best advice that anyone gives her, ever. (Second best, counting _look-from-a-different-angle_ when she's trapped by a madman with no one to help but her dead friend's baby brother.)

Ethel can be a bit of a one-track thinker, sometimes. It's a flaw, and even at eleven she knows she has problems looking at things from more than one angle. She's hungry? She goes to the fridge and eats. There are jerks at school? She throws punches and sits in detention. She wants to go faster? She runs faster. She gets a bike? She turns the pedals, and keeps turning the pedals as fast as she can until “as fast as she can” gets faster. But she's been so caught up in pedaling like a maniac or finding the best trails and biggest hills, that it's never occurred to her that maybe the answer is right underneath her.

She goes to the library and reads every book she can find on bikes.

There are different kinds of bikes for different things, different shapes of handlebars, different materials, different frames. The width of tires makes a difference. There are bikes where you can _change gears_ – and here she's been riding around on that dumb one-speed thing all this time.

Ethel lets herself go without candy and movie trips for a while, and saves up for a new bike. Her arm heals up, and she finds a used ten-speed that's within her price range. She raids her dad's garage, arms herself with library-book knowledge and borrowed tools, and... well, she plays around a little. Jiso takes forms that can hold things, monkeys and birds and chameleons, equipped to turn pages and hand over tools and hold things in place while she fixes them. By the time she's done, she goes faster on flat ground than her old bike ever did on downhill slopes.

She and Jiso hold out hope, though. Maybe he'll settle as something manageable. A dog would be fine – the fastest dog can go forty-five miles per hour, and even then it'd have to be a greyhound. Jiso likes cat forms too, but Ethel's never seen him as a cheetah before. Whatever he is, they hope, maybe he'll be something that Ethel can keep up with.

It happens in the eighth grade, and it's Pamela Rosales's fault, though Ethel is pretty sure that a lot of things are Pamela Rosales's fault, like global warming and light pollution. They've been classmates throughout middle school, and all the teachers know that if they sit together, there's going to be a fight. Pamela thinks Ethel is gross and stupid and probably a criminal, and Ethel thinks Pamela is dumb and vapid and shows off to get boys to like her. It doesn't matter that they're both wrong and that come college they're going to be best friends; what matters is here and now, and Pamela's stupid monkey dæmon giving Jiso a condescending pat on the head when Pamela gets the last word in an argument. She flounces off (actually she just walks away, but in Ethel's eyes it totally looks like she's flouncing) and Jiso changes from a dog to a bird to shriek and swoop after him with his talons out like he's about to snatch him right off Pamela's shoulder. The move is wicked fast, and Pamela's dæmon shrieks, falls off, and takes at least five different forms before Pamela catches him and runs off. Jiso lands on Ethel's shoulder and glares after him, feathers rustling, and that's the last time he ever transforms.

Ethel does her research. The two of them sit in front of the computer with the results, exchange a glance, and burst out laughing.

He's a goddamn peregrine falcon.

The fastest animal – not even fastest land animal, the straight-up fastest animal alive. A bird that could keep up with a freight train and dive like a plane. A ten-speed bike's not going to be enough, and they both know it.

The beginnings of ideas form in her head, that day. They're dangerous ideas, but from a certain point of view they're still good ones. Ideas that will get her in trouble, that will lead to more hospital trips, that will shape her education and career path, that will one day earn her the nickname “Gogo.” Her dæmon is fast. Ethel's fast, too. Just not fast enough.

Yet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dæmons featured:  
> Gogo: Jiso, peregrine falcon _(Falco peregrinus)_  
>  Gogo's mom: Unnamed, Eurasian tree sparrow _(Passer montanus)_


End file.
